英文词源
No matching word found in the dictionary.
Word of Random
- spectacle
- spectacle: [14] Spectacle is one of a large family of English words that go back ultimately to Latin specere ‘look’ (a descendant of the Indo- European base *spek- ‘look’, of which a reversed Greek version *skep- gave English sceptic and scope). Others include special, species, spectator [16], spectre [17] (etymologically an ‘appearance’ or ‘image’), spectrum [17] (from Latin spectrum ‘appearance’, ultimate source also of spectre, and first used for the ‘band of colours’ by Isaac Newton around 1671), speculate [16], spite, and spy, not to mention prefixed forms such as aspect [14], auspice, conspicuous [16], espionage, expect, frontispiece, inspect [17], respect, and suspect. Spectacle itself comes via Old French spectacle from the Latin derivative spectāculum ‘show, sight’.
The application to a ‘device for seeing with’, which lies behind English spectacles [15] and its abbreviation specs [19], is a post-Latin development.
=> auspice, conspicuous, espionage, expect, frontispiece, inspect, respect, special, species, suspect
